On the status of recursive rules in transformational grammar

Abstract

Linguistic creativity is a traditionally-recongnized trait of natural language. Certain proposals in transformational linguistics seek to explain linguistic creativity with the help of the metamathematical notion of recursive rules. It is argued in this paper that a close investigation of this aspect of transformational theory reveals little empirical or conceptual support for inducting these rules from metamathematics into linguistic theory. Several major assumptions of transformational theory interact significantly with the axiomatic character of its recursive rules; some of these assumptions have been examined in this paper. In this connection, a brief comparison between transformational grammar and Pānini's linguistic theory — in the context of a prefactory remark on Pānini's grammar in Chomsky's Aspects — also appears to throw valuable light on the possible form the principle of linguistic creativity may take in the grammar of a natural language.